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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » How Trump and his media acolytes got the coronavirus wrong
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » How Trump and his media acolytes got the coronavirus wrong
The above compilation of clips, mostly from Fox News, shows how leading media supporters of the President and Trump himself were viewing the epidemic only a few weeks ago. Since then the US has become the nation most affected and Trump has changed his tune. His latest is blaming the World Health Organisation.
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https://twitter.com/portraitinflesh/status/1247510090736906241?s=09
And first...
That he seems sane and reasonable is just a reflection of the Trump shaded GOP.
Today he has announced the US is producing 110,000 ventilators for example (200 of which have been requested by the UK) and he is also expanding testing for Covid 19.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52213439
On another note Trump has also threatened to withdraw funding from the WHO over alleged bias to China
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52208156
https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1247513395601031168?s=20
The 'intellectual' reference in the linked piece made me think initially it was going to be a hatchet job on Liberal ponces, but apart from a dig at de Blasio it goes after the Trumpers. An intellectual wing to Trumpism, who knew?!!
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/george-bush-2005-wait-pandemic-late-prepare/story
"To respond to a pandemic, we need medical personnel and adequate supplies of equipment," Bush said. "In a pandemic, everything from syringes to hospital beds, respirators masks and protective equipment would be in short supply."
Bush told the gathered scientists that they would need to develop a vaccine in record time.
"If a pandemic strikes, our country must have a surge capacity in place that will allow us to bring a new vaccine on line quickly and manufacture enough to immunize every American against the pandemic strain," he said....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-52212777
Given it is a proper uni, confident they will be able to do.
The obvious criticism is why we didn't utilize them in the first place.
1) Lives
2) Proper Process and Not Utilising The Wrong Resources (not undermining the authority of your own organisation) ?
Not sure how that can be described as getting a hold on it.
He also accused the WHO of calling it wrong. An enormous great pot and kettle comes to mind.
I have no idea if we are getting it right here, but at least Boris and his team give the impression of knowing what they are doing.
FFS...
https://unherd.com/2020/04/the-mysticism-of-the-far-right/
There are now thousands of documents available that detail exactly which scientists recommended what and when.
The only indication of Cummings having involvement is gossip piece by a reporter reporting something someone heard someone else say they'd heard.
For the US:
We have numerous documented instances of Trump making it up as he goes along - and being proud of it.
To be fair to Boris, if he pulls through this ok, he looks like he will have handled this very, very well. He has the right personality to front it up. If, as he appears to have done, he listens to the experts that is another plus. He always handed over the technical questions. And the cherry on the top was proving to the sceptics it was serious by catching the damn virus himself and going down bad with it rather than recovering in a few days with very mild symptoms.
Difficult to know what else he could have done (of course I don't know what happened in planning meetings), but provided he recovers fully it will have been cracking leadership.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-boris-johnsons-temperature-fallen-21831246?fbclid=IwAR3oa84BSydzsHz-Z1VLnjIHKOzL2IUBP3TpsxOEbrFctizWgR7ffGMwVk4
But the Federal government still has a lot of power and it's still using some of that power in an actively harmful way - e.g. In the distribution of medical supplies.
Any other President, any other political leader pretty much, would have been completely destroyed by the series of actively harmful steps that Trump has taken. Yet I wouldn't be surprised to see him re-elected.
Which guarantees that more deaths will be attributed to COVID19 than will actually occur. This is because a non-trivial number of people diagnosed with COVID19 don't have it. Since they are not doing post-mortem tests on everyone, the diagnosis will be used on the death certificate.
So the ONS number will err on the high side, if anything.
It’s reckless, it’s irresponsible and I hope that one of the medical heads now tells them to STFU. The stories they need to tell are elsewhere.
Record day of deaths - should be plenty of questions about lifting the lockdown at the presser then...
Must say, I had assumed yesterday's total of deaths included a lag element for the weekend and that today's figures would be appreciably lower. Very worryingly this is not the case.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/06/a-second-potential-covid-19-vaccine-backed-by-bill-and-melinda-gates-is-entering-human-testing/
A new COVID-19 vaccine candidate is entering Phase 1 clinical human testing today, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted an application from Inovio Pharmaceuticals under the regulator’s Investigational New Drug program. Inovio plans to inject its first volunteer test subject with the INO-4800 DNA vaccine candidate it has developed, following promising results from preclinical studies performed on animals that did indicate increased immune response.
The Inovio DNA vaccine candidate works by injecting a specifically engineered plasmid (a small, independent genetic structure) into a patient so that their cells can produce a desired, targeted antibody to fight off a specific infection. DNA vaccines, while available and approved for a variety of animal infections in veterinary medicine, have not yet been approved for human use.
That said, Inovio’s work isn’t starting from scratch: The company previously completed a Phase 1 study for a DNA vaccine candidate for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), where it showed promising results and a high level of antibodies produced in subjects that persisted for an extended period of time.
Inovio has been able to scale up quickly, developing and producing “thousands of doses” of INO-4800 in just a few short weeks in order to support its Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials. The company has done so in part thanks to backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as funding from other nonprofits and organizations. If clinical trials are successful, Inovio says it will be able to have up to one million doses of the vaccine ready by the end of the year, for use both in additional trials and for potential emergency use pending authorization...
First, because of American demographics, Democrat-led states will have higher than average deaths compared with the United States as a whole.
Second, Trump placed Pence in charge of countering Covid-19 so if opinion does turn against the White House, the scapegoat Veep can be dumped.
Third, by November, numbers should be falling. Trump will take credit, as he will for any progress on the cure or vaccine front, by pointing to the government's injection of cash.
Fourth, a disease-led election places Biden's frailty in the spotlight.
I mean that diagnosis of probable COVID19 infection has been consistently running higher than the number proven by tests. You can see this across all the countries that have been testing (primarily) those who have symptoms.
Not much left to restrict though is there - can't ban food shopping.
I doubt limiting jogging hrs will make any difference.
We need hospital admissions vs hospital discharges, as real time information.
Wales 33
Scotland 70
NI 5
total UK 936
Keep trying on 111
If not, perhaps one of those switched on journos might ask about it rather than being a knob.
Then again, perhaps call the GP's surgery. By all accounts they are quieter than usual right now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/business/coronavirus-cruise-industry-carnival.html?source=122648
But it's clear that the US is in big, big trouble in terms of stopping the disease. It looks like they are going to do much worse than other countries in terms of cases and deaths. And their economic response looks likely to be slow and fumbling.
https://twitter.com/PreetBharara/status/1247730898340102144?s=20
Firstly, is it really the case that states that will vote Democrat anyway are likely to be disproportionately affected? Sure, I can see New York is being hit hard as a densely populated area which got the infection early, and I can see sparsely populated Nebraska being relatively less affected. But key swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan etc are or will be affected substantially. And economically, all states are taking a hit (arguably, if you're economically hammered but with few deaths that's worse for Trump as harder for voters to understand WHY they are losing money).
Secondly, of course deputy heads can always roll. But Trump is expected to and is fronting up briefings and so on. On such a huge issue, he can't credibly say, "I wasn't really on top of it - just assumed Mike had it under control, and was horrified to see he didn't..."
Thirdly, the timelines may well work for a recovery in terms of fewer daily deaths, but not economically I suspect.
Fourthly, I don't agree coronavirus exposes Biden's flaws. It is likely to make the campaign more reliant on set piece ads and managed media releases, whereas Biden's problems are with spontaneity and getting enthusiastic crowds - both of which become LESS important. He can also point to experience as VP - to the extent there will be concern about changing horses in mid-stream, that's far less of an issue with Biden than any other prospective Democratic candidate.
I don't think this dooms Trump at all. For a start, at the moment his favourability has improved a bit (though less than most leaders at this time). But I really don't think it helps him - the economics are really bad, and there's serious potential to be portrayed as having been too relaxed early on.
Can anyone recall if there was any conclusion?
I found this paper (2016) which says many of the home ones are inaccurate.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27089002
There are also loads who would not vote for him in a month of sundays.
High floor, low ceiling - so he is about to be crushed!
Just as Boris’s letter and info leaflet drops through the letterbox.
"Now watch this drive!"
1. Lockdowns work (Spain and Italy are showing this)
2. Other countries can get on top of this and stop spread (S. Korea / Taiwan)
3. We have not handled the first wave optimally - no reason to do the same again next time!
4. We are understanding more about the virus - both in terms of the basic biology but also in terms of clinical trials.
And the Dow is so far up on the day.
So you can tighten down, if I want exercise I could walk to the supermarket but I’ll stick with driving.